Posts Tagged ‘Konami’

If you came to me and said that there was an open world stealth game in development about dynamic infiltration of forts, with horses, and a multiplayer meta-game, I’d be giddy. That’s what Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is. That it’s also part of a series I haven’t played since 1998’s Metal Gear Solid, and that it’s burdened – or strengthened – by Hideo Kojima’s batshit lore, only serves to make it more interesting.

At this year’s Gamescom, a new 22 minute demonstration was shown to attendant press, designed to depict how the same missions and multiplayer shown at E3 could be radically different based on the dynamic systems at work. A video of that demo is below, and it contains stealth-enabling horseshit.

As daft and self-obsessed as it became, Metal Gear Solid is a wonderful thing. The series has only been spotted on PC a few times over the years, but delightfully we will get to interrogate its two shiny new games. Open-world sneak ‘em up Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and its short standalone prologue Ground Zeroes are both coming to PC via Steam. Maybe PC folks are lucky, knowing less about the knots the backstory tied then bloody-mindedly untangled at agonising length in MGS 4. For many of us, it might simply be a pleasant and silly open-world sneaky game.

If brevity is the soul of wit – and what reason to doubt arras-dwelling Polonius? – then Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow: Mirror Of Fate HD is the most witless game title since Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army. Of course, if brevity truly is the soul of wit then you could also argue that the first paragraph of any article in this esteemed periodical is a hollow parp from the joy buzzer of a dead clown. Let’s move on.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow: Mirror Of Fate HD is coming to PC later this month, having made its society debut on the Nintendo Several Screen before porting across to the last-gen MicroSonys. Although it is canonically related to the 3D Lords of Shadow games, Mirror Of Fate is a more traditional side-scrolling Castlevania. And therefore, to my eyes at least, far more interesting.

In Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 you play as Dracula, who over the course of many tortuous cutscenes is established as one of the most powerful beings in this game’s universe. Phenomenally mighty! Even god’s afraid of this guy!

Then a few hours in you’re told not to step on leaves in case they rustle, and attract some goatman who’ll instakill you via cutscene. It’s the worst stealth section I’ve ever played in anything, ever, and topped off by the fact that immediately afterwards you rip goatman’s face off with no trouble whatsoever. A small part of a huge game this may be, but it amply demonstrates why LOS2 totally sucks.Read the rest of this entry »

The headline contains the seed of the plot for the second Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow game. It sounds like a particularly lurid SyFy movie in the vein of Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, or a ‘History’ Channel miniseries about the true meaning of Stonehenge. Either way, it sounds like a load of cobblers but that’s not to say the notion of thwacking Satan with a blood whip isn’t at least vaguely appealing. Promising exploration, open world shenanigans and ‘a movable camera’, Lords Of Shadow 2 certainly sounds like it has all the mod-cons. I’ll probably have forgotten that it’s actually coming out on PC by the time I finish writing this post but definitive proof has arrived in the shape of a demo, which you can download now.

One of the downsides of being a games journalist (violins please) is that you don’t play many games that aren’t also ‘work.’ I secretly indulge a Counter Strike habit and the odd round of Hearthstone behind the sheds, sure, but mostly I play stuff I’m writing about or might write about. To break into that cycle takes a special kind of game. Something unique in style and structure. Which is another way to say I can’t stop replaying Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.

Metal Geaaaaaarrrrrrrr?!?!?!?! On PC? This particular collision of worlds – masters of espionage infiltrating the home of spyware, cyborg ninjas running amok in cyberspace – isn’t unheard of, but it’s far from the norm. Then again, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance isn’t your average Metal Gear game. It dispenses with stealth almost entirely, favoring combo and counter-heavy action over tippy-toeing and mullet-rocking. But does the extra helping of over-the-top insanity gel with Metal Gear’s, er, also insane (but in a different way) universe? And how does the long-awaited PC port hold up? Here’s wot I think.

Edit: Steve Key, European Brand Manager for Konami, confirms that this was an accident rather than a DRM issue and the publisher has applied a fix: “MGR PC Update – offline problems *should* now be fixed.” That’s quick work and commendable.

Oh no, say it ain’t so. Another single-player game that boots its owners back into cold, cruel reality the second an Internet connection drops? That would be the saddest of shames if it were the full story. Fortunately, that doesn’t appear to be the case. While it’s true that Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance on Steam falls to freshly sliced pieces when an Internet connection isn’t holding it together, the issue is apparently not intentional DRM. Signs instead point to a Steam API error, though Konami and Platinum have yet to respond in any official capacity.

We’ve known for a while that Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (because why have one meaningless subtitle when you can have two and invent a new word) would eventually turn its helicopter-bifurcating blade on PC, but that’s all we’ve known. Like a ninja or secret agent from any series other than Metal Gear, Konami’s been pin-drop silent on details. BUT NO MORE. Metal Gear Rising: The Redundancing now has a Steam listing, and it offers a just-close-enough-for-comfort January date.

“It’s in the final stages right now. You’ll be seeing it pop up on Steam any day now.”

This being the shooty-slicey side of Metal Gear rather than a game of the prowly-prolix variety, I’m hoping for DMC style silliness, with tongues thrust so far inside cheeks that everybody involved has begun to resemble the terrifying TV-dwelling puppet, Pob. I was slightly unnerved when I found a Youtube video containing every cutscene and cinematic in the game. It’s two hours and nineteen minutes long. The opening cinematic is below – fancy another two hours of that sort of thing?

I’ll admit that it feels odd to be posting about Castlevania games coming out on PC, but it’s happening and we just have to be okay with that. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is soon set to materalise from a cloud of bats on our keyboarded shores, and once again brings with it the tale of Dracula fighting through a large, open environment, filled with demons and stuff. But why? What’s his motivation? Well, old toothypegs has been warned about the return of Satan, for some reason, and has to gather his powers so that he can kick Satan’s ass. As you do when you’re warned about the return of Satan.

The existential limbo that the PC version of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain finds itself is is pretty apt given the ridiculous lore of the series. For what it’s worth, Hideo Kojima has stated that it will appear “sometime”, but that it’s not a priority. Boo-urns to that! His lackadaisical attitude isn’t going to stop me from showing off the new videos of the game, because open-world stealth games are my jam. Below is probably the only footage of Metal Gear in existence that’s not interrupted by seven billion cut-scenes, which I find encouraging. I might be able to play this when it eventually comes to the PC.Read the rest of this entry »

If there’s one thing you expect from a Castlevania game, it’s Patrick Stewart. Sorry I mean vampires! Definitely vampires. Lords of Shadow has coffins full of the buggers, though it’s shy about the fact and sticks them behind one of the most turgid and over-extended openings I’ve ever had the misfortune to play through. Things do get sexy, but to find out about Gabriel Belmont’s combat cross you gotta jump, jump.Read the rest of this entry »